


Journeys End (In Lovers Meeting)

by kindkit



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:59:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindkit/pseuds/kindkit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two aging spies in a disreputable hotel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Journeys End (In Lovers Meeting)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quettaser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quettaser/gifts).
  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Die Reise endet (wenn Liebende sich treffen)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/657162) by [eurydike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurydike/pseuds/eurydike)



> Many thanks to my beta reader, Harry_Manders.

It's an unremarkable Monday in July. The staffroom is empty and so is Jim's pigeonhole, apart from a typewritten envelope showing the return address of an insurance firm. It's the sort of thing most people would throw away unopened. Jim puts it in a pocket and forces himself to read the newspaper as usual over his usual cup of vile coffee before walking back to his trailer, also as usual. (Is this usual? Does he always walk this slowly? Does Matron always give him that quizzical smile when he passes her, or can she see through his manner to his raw nerves?) In his trailer he steams it open, being careful not to tear or blot the paper. He takes a gulp of vodka from his bottle and sits down to see what's inside.

It would be funny if, after all that, it really were just an advert.

So it seems to be, at first. But the typewritten letter inviting him to buy life insurance is signed with one of Bill's names: not a workname, but a name they privately decided on years ago for use if one of them was quarantined. Quarantine was a worst-case scenario, and at the time Jim felt slightly absurd.

After another drink of vodka, Jim uses a three-place transposition to turn the figures quoted in the letter into a post box number and a postal code. He writes a reply asking for a meeting to discuss policies in more detail. He has to recopy it after a bit more vodka because his hands aren't steady.

The next day, queasy from lack of sleep, he drives away from the school, flipping coins to choose his direction, and eventually drops the letter into a pillar box in Crewkerne.

Two days and two more nearly sleepless nights later he gets a scrawled postcard (Bill must have written with his left hand) of Canterbury Cathedral, rhapsodizing about the eastern crypt and signed Julia. It's all meaningless bar the picture and a time. They're to meet at nine o'clock on Saturday at the St. Sebastian club in Earl's Court. London feels risky, but it's probably more discreet than Bill travelling. The Circus has always averted its eyes from Bill's forays into places like Earl's Court.

On Friday Jim tells Thursgood he's going hiking on Dartmoor for a few days. Since it's the summer holidays he doesn't actually need permission, but it's best to keep Thursgood mollified and incurious. Jim takes an evening train to Exeter, stays overnight, and goes to London via Southampton the next day. On the train he manages a doze, but dreams that he comes late to the meeting and finds Bill walking away, and for all Jim's shouting Bill doesn't turn round and never will.

He arrives early in London. He leaves his case at the station and wastes time in shops and cafés, watching for watchers. There are none unless they're very good, and Jim doubts the Circus would waste good pavement artists on him. He's nobody, a ghost. If they're watching anyone, it's Bill, and Bill is too canny for them.

They're probably not watching Bill either. Jim knows he's been on edge since Czecho, tense almost to paranoia. A lifetime's wary habit has dug its claws into him just as he ought to let it go.

By seven he's too restless to do anything but walk. At half-past eight he lets himself pass the St. Sebastian, telling himself it's caution, that he's ensuring he hasn't picked up a tail, that there are no mysterious vans parked outside, that the place is even still there. There aren't and it is, defying the mayfly life expectancy of queer clubs. It's been easier, Jim supposes, since the law changed. Half an hour later, having brushed off a frail shaky addict who offered to suck his prick for two quid, he comes back. He opens the door with numb fingers.

There's a bit of fuss about the "membership fee" (£10, Christ, but maybe he and Bill can reuse the club as a meeting place), and then he's inside, struggling against an awful sensation of transparency he hasn't felt since the war, when the penalty for giving away too much was Gestapo interrogation and a bullet you'd be grateful for by the end. He glances around. Bill is there at a back table, drinking something clear that must be gin and tonic. If he'd had a beer instead, it would've told Jim to abort and try their fallback two hours from now. Bill detests beer.

Bill notices him and waves dramatically, just another fairy meeting his friend.

Jim orders a drink. He's making so much effort to be calm that it undoubtedly shows. He's not as good at this as he used to be. But a nervous middle-aged man isn't enough to draw anyone's attention in here. The barman must have seen thousands, respectable fellows creeping out of their normal lives and planning to creep back the next morning. Jim's always had that air of sexual normality, the one deception he's never had to work at. He passes more easily than Bill; it's ironic since Bill is half-normal, if that's the word. Bill fancies women too, while Jim never has.

With his mind sputtering along such pointless roads, Jim sits down at Bill's table and says, "Hullo."

"Hello, my dear," Bill flutters. "How rustication suits you. You've never looked younger. Do tell me, is Norfolk terribly dull and virtuous?"

They chat misleadingly for the time it takes to finish their drinks and leave. Then, in the day's last light, Jim walks with Bill to the sort of hotel that doesn't mind two men called Smith and Jones, with no bags, sharing a room.

Very likely, Jim thinks as the clerk hands Bill the key with professional incuriosity, Bill has taken boys here.

After he locks the door of their room, Bill's whole body seems to change, to shrink from an expansive gesturing queen into . . . Bill. "My God, Jim," he says, leaning on the door. "How are you really?"

Jim doesn't know. He can't know, standing here two feet from Bill whom he hasn't seen or talked to or touched since last October, he cannot possibly know how he is because everything is in suspense. "I don't want to talk. Not now." He reaches for Bill, and then he is one thing: he is terrified. Bill's always had the power to frighten him, ever since he was an ignorant cricket-playing boy being seduced on a hearthrug.

Bill comes to him, all wide eyes and sharp bones. The same Bill as ever, thank God; there's nothing new to be frightened of. He has Bill half undressed before they get to the bed, kissing his narrow unscarred shoulders, his thin lips and well-made ears, the dip above his collarbone that Jim has always found beautiful.

The last time, the night before Czecho, he'd been rough, angry that Bill wasn't taking his warning seriously. He'd hurt him a little without meaning to, and apologised by bringing him off slowly, sucking him until he sweated and cursed, and then forgot how to curse, before letting him come.

It's not like that now. It can't be. Jim's bad shoulder won't hold much of his weight and there's no comfortable position for him on the sagging mattress. He's got to muck about, propping himself up with pillows and the wadded duvet, accommodating the pain he wants to forget. He wants to lose it all in Bill, maybe let Bill take him, go deeper into him than bullets, deeper even than the awful fucking loneliness he can't believe, now, that he's borne for all these months.

But he can't.

Bill is patient, astonishingly so, arranging pillows without making him feel nursemaided, touching him like he's still a man, still at least the shadow of the twenty-year-old athlete Bill could get hard just looking at. Bill kisses him hotly, everywhere, urging Jim's body to the same readiness as his mind, eagerly taking Jim's prick in his mouth. It takes Jim a long time to come, badly though he's needed this, but Bill is tireless. Later, when Jim's hand strokes him, he arches and cries out as though it's all he could have wanted.

Jim sleeps a little, the most beautiful sleep with Bill's arm around him. Waking up is peaceful too, without startlement, without his usual half-conscious grab for the gun he no longer carries. Bill is awake, studying him, fingers going over Jim's scars. In the yellow light of the bedside lamp Jim sees the grey at Bill's temples and amidst the golden-brown stubble of his beard. There might be more than there was in October. Jim isn't sure if he hopes so or not.

"What the hell did they do to you?" Bill asks conversationally. "This isn't even properly healed."

"When their doctor patched me up, I doubt he was worried about the long term."

"And didn't our lot do anything? Christ, I can feel a hollow here under the skin, and - "

"I didn't want any more bloody doctors."

Bill stares at him and shakes his head. "Idiot." He sounds the way he did long ago, when they worked together. "They hurt you."

Of course the Russians hurt him. That's what happens. Jim has hurt people in his work, now and then, and so has Bill. "It's over now."

"They hurt you while I sat on my arse here and could do _nothing_ , nothing."

"You got me back. I know it was you, there was gossip at Sarratt. You pressured Control."

"I'd have gone over Control's head if I'd had to. I'd have given them any bloody thing they asked for. But they'd already shot you. Tortured you."

Bill's always been above guilt, like an angel. All the mud that traps ordinary people won't even stick to Bill's toes. It almost hurts, now, to see him touched by it. Jim pulls him close, quietly gritting his teeth against the strain in his shoulder, and smoothes Bill's messy hair. "Not your fault. It was Control, the poor bastard. They made a fool of him. All that guff about a mole, it was nothing but bait in a trap." Control gave them Jim, Jim gave them the Czech networks. (He stops thinking about the Czech networks.) Bill saved the only thing he could.

"Tell me what happened," Bill says, like a penitent asking for another lash.

"I don't want to talk about it. I'm happy now. Let me be happy. Christ, I didn't know if I'd ever see you again."

"I'd never have let them keep you."

"Not then." He hadn't been able to think of Bill then. Only about the layers of cover stories, at first, and then about pain and how to stop it. "Afterwards. Quarantine." _Any day now_ , he'd told himself at Sarratt. _Just need to get a little stronger, then they'll send me back to Brixton._ Instead, some nannyish soothing creature from resettlement had come with money and warnings.

"I thought it better to wait a while and let things cool off. Not that I give a damn for regulations, you know that, but I didn't want them to make difficulties about your pension or anything." Bill squeezes closer, his face in the curve of Jim's neck. Imperturbable Bill, cool Bill who brushes trouble off with a laugh, is clinging to him. "So I had no news for months. I didn't even know where you were. In the end I had to blackmail Chilcott a bit--his boyfriend's a clerk in housekeeping, probably got access to more files than I do. Have they really made you a teacher?"

"French. In a prep school."

"My poor Jimmy. Are the boys pretty, at least?"

"Not particularly." _Though I think_ , Jim nearly says, because it's tempting to see if he could make this new Bill jealous, _one of them might be in love with me._ "I've only stood it so long because I wanted to be where you could find me."

"I've found you now." Bill kisses him deeply, fingers twisting in Jim's hair and digging into his good arm. "I may never let you out of my sight again."

It's not a thing to take seriously. But Jim has been at this secret war with Bill for thirty-five years; he can't pass by even the smallest chance to conquer. "Why not chuck the Circus, Bill? It's dying, you've said so for ages. If you left, we wouldn't need all this damned tradecraft just to see each other."

Bill lies motionless for a second and then sighs. "I wish it were that simple." He smiles sadly with the corners of his mouth. Jim thinks of it as Bill's imperial smile, the smile of a man who has tanks where his foe has homemade spears, but regrets the necessity of using them. "There's work on that I can't leave just yet."

Weary with another defeat, piqued by the moment when he stupidly imagined Bill might capitulate, Jim says, "I'm sure. What's her name? Or is it a boy this time?"

"There's always a boy. There's always a girl or two. They don't matter, and you know it."

Jim bows his head and Bill kisses the anxious spot between his eyebrows. Completing his inevitable surrender, Jim changes the subject. "I wish I could make love to you properly. Maybe next time my shoulder will be better."

"I wish you'd tell me what happened."

Jim tells him. Bill's got an agent-runner's instinct for omissions; he picks at the shielding half-truths until Jim's memories open and bleed. Afterwards they're both silent. Jim's heart is pounding, his chest catching so that he has to lie still and breathe, and Bill holds him with a half-concealed tenderness that stings like surgical spirit, clean and sharp. Bill's face is locked tight, showing nothing but grim thoughtfulness; the emotion only seeps out through his caressing hands.

Later, when Jim has calmed and is beginning to be sleepy, Bill says, "I love you." They haven't said that to each other in years. It's been understood between them--understood mostly by Bill, but he's the one who's clever about these things--that it shouldn't need saying. They're grown men, not characters in a vulgar romantic film.

Saying it, Bill looks away, like the awkward boy he never was. Jim lays his hands along the emphatic bones of Bill's face, which are untouched by age, and the creased, slackening skin which isn't. "I love you." He traces the crest of an eyebrow, whose arch gives Bill his look of permanent irony. "Now tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing. Nothing, really. I've been worried, that's all."

He's . . . _lying_ is too strong a word for what Bill does. He's keeping a secret, hiding some knowledge he thinks is too burdensome to share. It must be serious, if Jim can see the effort. "You can tell me anything, you know."

"I know." Bill smiles, distant and blurred, like a long-distance telephone call. "But there's nothing. I can put all my worries behind me now. Here we are." He tilts his face towards Jim, asking for a kiss, and Jim is pleased to oblige. "If I did retire - no, I should say _when_ , I'm not bloody Control. When I retire, in a couple of years perhaps . . . what if we went away?"

"Away - ?"

"Left England."

"Where would you go?" He hasn't the nerve to say _we_ , although Bill said it first.

"Anywhere. Anywhere away from this frightful nonsense, this game we play with the other side. I'm so tired of it, sometimes. Would you come with me? Leave England for me?"

There's nowhere away from the game, not truly. It isn't often, though, that Bill needs comforting. That he gives Jim chances like this. "You know I would." Jim loves England. He's at home here as he's never been elsewhere. But he came to love England through loving Bill.

"Good." Bill lies with his head on Jim's chest and doesn't, for some time, move. Jim listens to his breathing, to the cars passing outside, to someone giggling in the corridor and the creak of bedsprings from the room above them. _What's wrong, Bill?_ , he wonders, and tells himself there need be nothing wrong. They're not young anymore; perhaps Bill's noticed at last. Perhaps Bill's found a taste for ordinary peace and happiness.

When Bill does eventually speak, it's only to ask, "How's your shoulder?"

"All right." In fact it's hurting, a deep ache from lying in one position too long, but Bill's not the only one who can tell white lies.

"Hmm." Bill spreads his fingers over Jim's chest, stroking the muscles that are nearly as firm as they used to be, the hair that's only starting to grey. "Do you feel like another go? I've missed you."

"You know I never get enough of you." He kisses Bill, putting all the strength he can into it, and Bill murmurs happily, roused as always by gentle aggression. Yes, everything's all right. Jim's shoulder, Bill's thoughts. They're all right. They can tell this white lie together. There are hours left 'til morning.


End file.
